


The Bet

by FidgetyWriter



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Anna Ryder, F/M, First Time, lots of mentions of Alec and brother Ryder too, original Ryder, there's a lot of smut but also a lot of feelings because of who I am as a person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 22:23:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11701074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FidgetyWriter/pseuds/FidgetyWriter
Summary: Anna Ryder's brother made a ridiculous bet before they left for Andromeda. On the floor of a Tempest cargo closet, she accidentally ends up owing him ten credits.





	The Bet

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously my Ryder is named Anna, and I named and developed her brother long before I realized we were getting stuck with Scott as the default name. Thus, her brother is Malik because I can't call him Scott, I just can't do it.

Anna Ryder’s first thought as she crashed unceremoniously onto the floor, one arm wedged awkwardly up against the run-down sofa, was of her comatose brother and his stupid bet.

Her second thought was how angry she was that her first thought was about her _brother_ of all people.

Anything was better; however, than thinking about the look on Jaal’s face as he found out, trapped behind layers of soundproof glass, exactly what happened to angara captured by the kett.

She hadn’t meant this late night visit to Liam to turn into anything. They seemed to simply gravitate to one another, starting on Habitat 7. Perhaps _gravitate_ was a bad word to describe a connection formed by falling thousands of feet out of a splintering shuttle. But the minute Liam came running up over a hill, huffing hard from the jog and surge of adrenaline, she’d grabbed his hand like they were old friends, not two strangers who’d only learned one another’s first names one hundred and twenty seconds earlier in a shuttle now in pieces.

It just seemed right to end up on the sofa with him again. It was the only place that made any sense. Anna didn’t know if she would ever be able to look at Jaal again, not when she’d watched his face simply crumple in pain and there had been no words, in her native tongue or his, to express how sorry she was that she hadn’t arrived eighty years earlier to stop all of this. 

She liked the others aboard the Tempest plenty well: Drack kept emailing stock photos of old Milky Way rifles to help her “feel better” about Alec’s death, Vetra responded to Dr. Lexi’s strict orders to eat more vegetables by handing off two boxes of Blast-Oh’s cereal to Anna in the bathroom in the dead of night like some illicit deal, and Gil was nice enough for someone who spent one night each week destroying the rest of them in poker. But something was inexplicably comforting about the sofa that had traveled between galaxies. Or maybe the man who brought it.

Liam was doing push-ups, no shirt on, when she entered the room because _of course_ that’s how he would deal with this--exert more energy, blow through it, process it, and be done with it. She’d “dealt” with it by avoiding Jaal like the plague and allowing herself to cry for about a minute under cover of the Pathfinder’s quarters...her quarters, as she was still getting used to calling them. Alec always hated people crying, especially his own children, who he’d clap hard on the shoulder and command, not comfort, with a “Shake it off! This is beneath you”.

Anna could feel the sadness, the horror, the anger still bubbling in her throat just beneath the surface, but those near-smacks on the shoulder had taught her long ago to swallow the tears and pretend she was fine. Alec wasn’t here anymore (God, whenever she thinks of him it’s only the same image over and over: his mouth forming inaudible words on the other side of his helmet as the sweet sting of oxygen flooded back into her lungs), but the response he would have elicited was automatic now. _Shake it off. This is beneath you._

“Hey,” she said. 

“Hi,” Liam replied.

It might’ve sounded curt from anyone else, especially since even in the long pause that followed he never stopped moving. He was doing the push-ups far too fast: "sloppy form" her dad would’ve said. It wasn’t about form, though, she knew. It was a way to get the feelings out.

One of his elbows made a popping sound, he grimaced, and both knees went to the floor to hold himself up.

“Damn,” he muttered. He was suddenly out of breath in a way he hadn’t been when they’d greeted one another.

“You okay?” she asked.

Liam got to his feet--it was almost a hop-- with remarkable speed for someone who’d been on the floor seconds earlier. 

“Yeah,” he told her. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

They ended up seated together on the sofa. He griped about no one’s willingness to work together; to get anything moving on Aya or the Nexus that could benefit both the angara and the new arrivals. Nobody wanted to stop treating everyone else like an outsider.

“I signed up for all of it, you know? But at some point something has to go right...something has to be familiar.”

 _That_ she understood. She tried to think of something that had gone right since she’d woken up from cryo, but the bar was set pretty low. Cons: her brother was in a medically unprecedented coma, her father was dead, and, for some very elusive reason, he’d transferred Pathfinder duties to her instead of Cora, who had trained for it. Pros: the angara hadn’t murdered her at first contact? Yeah, the bar was set pretty damn low.

Liam had suddenly gotten very close, and she wasn’t sure which of them had moved in to make this happen. His gaze was set intently on her in a way that, back in the Milky Way, might’ve made her blush and turn away. She’d resolved to be braver in a new galaxy, and being forced into the role of Pathfinder quickly put that resolve to the test.

She was afraid to break the moment, but also afraid of what he might start to think if they just continued to sit there, staring at one another. She willed her right hand to rise from her lap, and she set it, perhaps a bit heavily, on his shoulder. His skin felt almost like velvet under her fingertips. 

Her hand slid easily from his shoulder down his arm, tracing the muscles just under the surface. _Please do something_ , she willed him in her mind, _because I can’t_. Hadn’t her parents laughed at how different their twins were: how Malik leapt without looking and Anna debated internally for several minutes before even looking to leap at all?

Maybe Liam somehow heard her or maybe he just went straight to leaping: it didn’t matter. He grabbed at her body, pulling her in to close the minimal distance left between them. He kissed her, and, god, it was almost as dizzying and breathtaking as falling out of the shuttle over Habitat 7, but in a considerably better way.

He was warmer than usual because of the push-ups, the kind of heat a body produces when it's being exerted but hasn’t gotten around to sweating yet. She wanted to sink into it like the hot baths she’d drawn up in her parents’ house on Earth whenever she returned home from another semester or dig. She pulled at him and he pushed, insistently but not aggressively, until her back was pressed flat against the fraying cushions. He settled easy between her legs--they fit together once again.

She could tell he’d done this before by the way he transitioned his still-dizzying kisses from her mouth to her chin then to her neck. The realization sent a little prickle of fear up her spine--not that it was unexpected. He was clearly a leaper, like her brother, unafraid to express how he felt. Not everyone kept those feelings--or at least the expression of them-- so carefully in check throughout regular trips to the Citadel, school, and even digs where she and her crew ended up in remote corners of different planets with no other company for months at a time. 

Not that she’d never kissed anyone. There had been that guy in Purgatory (Malik dragged her there, of course)--what was his name? She thought it was something like Jonah or Jonas maybe. And Helithe, the asari chemist on one of those digs. She had always stopped it at just that, kisses, and she wasn’t completely sure why. Lack of nerve? Inexperience? (Malik had nearly choked on one of their shared lunches when he found out his sister had the opportunity to fuck an asari and didn’t). 

Liam was pulling at the zipper of her jacket, and she knew exactly where this was going--hell, where she _wanted_ it to go. But that involved being a little bit brave. Like a Pathfinder would be.

Anna helped Liam pull down the zipper and discard her jacket somewhere over the edge of the couch before remembering she was wearing the stupid Blasto tank top underneath it. He grinned against the nape of her neck, tangibly suppressing a laugh by continuing to kiss it. 

“He’s a very good Spectre, Liam,” she insisted.

The laugh came tumbling out of him, vibrating pleasantly against the tender skin of her throat.

“The third movie is the best,” he said. 

“You’re wrong, and we’re going to fight about it after this.”

“No, I’ll make you forget,” he promised, moving his kisses back up to her lips, and she believed him.

He slid a tentative hand up underneath the thin fabric emblazoned with the hanar Spectre. His fingers trailed up her belly and over the lower ribs, sending a delightful shiver up her entire body. Fingertips stopped just below the tight elastic of her bandeau. 

“Okay?” he asked.

Their lips were still touching, and she wanted to yell “ _fuck_ yes” into his warm breath, but she decided, as usual, for a bit of tact.

“Okay,” she assured him.

He gripped the bandeau and tank top together in one fist and pulled up with more force than she’d expected. She had a brief moment of fear for the thin shirt (if he ripped Blasto…), but they came up and over her head easily and were swiftly deposited in the abyss beyond the sofa where her jacket had also ended up. 

He took several long seconds to look her over. He was never hard to read, she could see the bit of ogling disguised in a somewhat mischievous smile, but he took too long. Sure, she was in good shape, but nothing so well-defined as his torso. She was a runner--built sleek for speed and endurance, not several layers of glorious muscles. She was just about to let the fear he didn’t like what he was seeing cause her to speak when he did.

“Damn,” he breathed. “Pathf--”

She caught his face in between two fingers on her right hand so his gaze was averted away from her bare chest and to her eyes. 

“Please, don’t call me Pathfinder when you’re admiring me half naked. It’s Anna right now.”

“Anna,” he said, letting the two syllables roll over his mouth in a low growl that caused the embers of the fire in her belly to ignite. 

He had no right being so attractive, and she almost cursed her father’s memory for handpicking such a beautiful person for his team...now _her_ team.

Liam gave her a stupid wink and said “Bye”. She had a second of terror--was he _leaving_ now? But he just grabbed at her sides with some force and lowered his head to trail a stream of kisses, sweeping across her collarbone and down to the breasts he’d recently freed. He took a pert nipple in his mouth and gently rolled his lips against it.

She unwillingly emitted a sound she never had before and was vaguely horrified at how stereotypical of a moan it was. Moaning was supposed to come from people putting on a show for their partner--Malik had once confessed he’d been with a woman on shore leave who moaned so much and so dramatically that halfway through he’d had to ask her to please maybe quiet down a little.

It was entirely real with Liam though, and he hadn’t even laughed at the sound. He seemed, instead, to take it as incentive to keep going, raking his fingers down her sides. It almost tickled, but it edged just on the line of pleasure and she shivered again. He did grin against her at the shiver, and she found herself smiling too. 

Liam yanked her hips up against his full length, and she was suddenly very aware of his hard cock, even through both of their sweatpants. The opportunity was there, but, like always, she hesitated: afraid to be too assertive, too demanding, to show off her inexperience. She took half a second to bite her lip through the over-cautiousness and remembered she was in another goddamn galaxy. _Fuck it_.

She rolled her hips, sliding where her thighs met against his evident boner. The surge of pleasure that shot up into her belly was almost distracting enough, but the look on Liam’s face was ten times better.

“Fuck, Pa--Anna,” he mumbled into her throat. “Please let me take those pants off of you.”

“What if I have Blasto underwear on too?” she asked.

She didn’t; that would’ve been too much (even though she’d seen Blasto panties in a shop on the Citadel and her friends had to threaten her with eternal abandonment to get her to walk away without purchasing them).

He gazed down at her, half a smile on his lips but not enough of one to show that he was truly calling her bluff. 

“Do...you?” he finally asked. 

“No, Jesus, Liam, that’d be weird.”

“You’re the worst,” he insisted but he was laughing again and she reveled in her ability to elicit that response from him. There hadn’t been enough laughter to go around in Andromeda yet. Between the two of them they might get it off to a good start though.

“Take them off then,” she said, the assertiveness coming a bit easier. 

“ _Ma’am_ ,” he acknowledged with a badly done mock salute. Sloppy form again. The joke would’ve angered Alec.

He twirled the end of one of her pants’ drawstrings around the edge of a finger and pulled it up and out toward him with agonizing nonchalance. It felt like the first time Anna had ever seen Liam take his time at anything. She wasn’t sure if this flattered or frustrated her--perhaps it was a bit of both.

If she wanted slow-moving romance, she’d have come for a candlelit dinner. She liked Liam, liked him a lot, but the idea of having a boyfriend in all of this was pretty unthinkable. The lecture hadn’t been intended for her, as she was the “good girl”, but she’d overheard Alec’s lecture to Malik about the dangers and unprofessionalism of fraternization the night before he shipped out to Alliance boot camp. Her brother, at least, had the courage to disobey their father about it almost immediately.

Liam was not only a part of her crew but, technically, she outranked him...was his direct commanding officer, or at least, as much at that meant on a civilian ship. It was entirely unethical for her to let this be happening at all. But he moved to pulling out the other drawstring with his teeth, and, hell, she was already in this deep. She didn’t have time for a game. If they were going to fuck, then they were going to _fuck_.

She meant to assist him in pulling her pants off. Pressing the heels of her feet against the opposite arm of the sofa, she, instead, all but rocketed herself out of those pants and right off the couch onto the floor. In a desperate attempt to catch herself (and salvage some shred of her dignity, _oh god this was not how this was supposed to go_ ) she went to grab the cushion but only ended up wedging her right arm awkwardly against the sofa.

And that’s when the memory of her brother came--before the embarrassed laughter and affirmations that she was just fine.

It was less than a week before they were set to leave for Andromeda. She’d been in the Lunar Base’s mess hall having a cup of coffee in the awkward aftermath of meeting Cora and Dr. Lexi for the first time. Malik had joined her wordlessly, pouring himself a cup and sliding onto the bench across from his sister.

“I met the last guy on the team,” he told her after several sips.

“The crisis response guy?” she asked. 

“Yeah. He seems nice--kinda talkative. I want to make a bet with you.”

“Uh...okay.” She surveyed him over the rim of the plastic mug, waiting for the joke to come.

“No, I’m serious. Ten credits says you bang this crisis response guy in Andromeda.”

It had taken every ounce of restraint Anna possessed to not spit her mouthful of coffee out in shock.

“ _I don’t bang people_ , Malik!” she’d insisted. 

“No bullshit, I’m calling it right now. He’s totally your type. Ten credits. Should be an easy way to get money out of me since you’re so sure it won’t happen!”

In Andromeda, crumpled naked on the floor with that crisis response guy clambering down to join her on the floor in belly-shaking laughter, she realized she was about to owe her stupid brother ten credits. Liam ran a hand through her hair as he continued to laugh. 

“You’re really okay?” he asked.

 _Worth it_.

“Promise,” she told him. 

Sometime between their very first talk about home on this couch and now, Liam had acquired an old coffee table to go with it. He gave it a mighty shove toward the wall, freeing up space for them to lie out next to one another (and more than enough for her to finally disentangle herself from the sofa). 

Instead of lying back out beside her, Liam grabbed her feet and pulled her toward him. The threadbare rug came with her. She laughed again at the way they were destroying the nice little nest he’d set up for himself in this storage room.

She became aware of what he was about to do a few seconds later as he coaxed her legs apart and settled the upper half of his body between them. His former, ongoing trail of kisses, interrupted by her Blasto joke and subsequent catapult off the furniture, resumed at one of her hipbones. And _fuck_ it felt good, but a very real surge of panic shot through her because kissing Liam because she was sad about what the kett did to angara was one thing, but she had never done anything much beyond this before.

“Liam,” she said, the edge evident in her voice. 

He raised his head immediately and placed a warm hand on her stomach. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked. 

“Is now a bad time to mention I’ve never done this?”

“You’ve never done which part of this exactly?”

“Um…” 

She suddenly hated that she’d mentioned anything at all. Being sexually inexperienced had never been an issue before--it wasn’t something that came up. She was always busy: with the Alliance, with school, with her digs. But now she was Pathfinder in an entirely alien galaxy, and she was afraid that she would be bad at this, just as she often feared she was bad at the lofty role Alec had forced on her.

“All of it,” she confessed. “Sex...in general.”

“We can stop,” he said, moving to pull away from her. 

“No,” she insisted, grabbing the hand he’d laid on her belly. “I want... I want this, but I don’t want you to walk away from this thinking,” (she put on a very weak imitation of his accent), “‘shite, the Pathfinder is the worst lay I’ve ever had’.”

Liam chuckled, not unkindly, and squeezed her hand. 

“That’s not how you use ‘shite’ at all,” he replied.

“Not the issue here!”

“Pathf--Anna. I’m having fun. _Really_. I like you. Let me handle this.”

“Okay,” she breathed.

He’d said he liked her. Liam had been the one person immediately on board with her promotion to Pathfinder--had outright told her he thought she was more than up for the job and repeated that sentiment when she’d expressed doubts on Eos. But he liked her as Anna too, not just for the role she played aboard the Tempest, but for who she was. Most of the anxiety left her body in a forceful exhale. 

“Okay,” she repeated. “Yeah, okay.”

“That was the worst imitation of me anyone has ever done,” he said through a grin that made her want to punch him.

She had no time to come up with an appropriately witty retort; however, because without any more warning Liam lowered his head back down, threw one of her thighs over each of his well-defined shoulders, and took her in his mouth. 

“Holy shit,” she managed to gasp out as he languidly ran his tongue over her clit.

It was ten thousand times better than touching herself. She was desperately torn between a desire to watch him because _god there was an attractive man between her legs_ and how heavy her eyelids suddenly felt.

Closing her eyes won out, and she let her head drop back to the floor. Her back arched up; Liam slid his other hand in the space between her spine and the threadbare rug and pulled her even closer against him. 

It was wet and messy, she felt a warm combination of her juices and his spit slide down her backside and to the floor, but it was a glorious kind of wet and messy. She didn’t care if the moans that rolled out of her were stereotypical or over the top. Brief ideas of anyone out in the cargo hold hearing them flashed across her mind, but that didn’t matter either against the way his tongue circled delightfully around her.

He switched from licks to a light suction, and the force of her impending orgasm came upon her so severely that she felt distinctly light-headed. His mouth was fire, flames shot up her hips and ran down her legs; down to knees that fell further apart as she pushed down against him. His hand on her belly steadied her in place as the flames turned to lightning and she grabbed at his hair, desperate to somehow last longer, to prevent this from ever stopping, to just stay here on the floor like this always where nothing else in either galaxy mattered.

“Liam, I’m gonna--” she sputtered.

He hummed in acknowledgment, and the vibration from that did it.

The pressure at her core coiled tight and then released. Anna all but wailed as her thighs snapped up together to cradle the head between them, and _fuck it_ if Vetra or Gil heard her out in the cargo hold. Liam rode her climax out with her, not even making a motion to pull away or stop until she yanked a little too hard at his hair because everything was suddenly too sensitive to be touched. 

“Ouch,” he said, though there was a tone of teasing in his voice. “Didn’t think you’d be a hair puller.” 

“We’re both learning things here,” she replied. 

He sat up and ran the back of his hand over his mouth. There was an awkward pause as Anna got briefly lost in the realization that Vetra or Gil definitely could have heard her out in the cargo hold, and the idea of doing a walk of shame back to the bridge where she was due in a little over an hour filled her with stomach-dropping horror.

Liam was gazing at her with a look he was obviously trying hard to be subtle about. She knew exactly what it meant and found the idea of obliging him far more inviting than continuing to lie on the floor and worry.

She sat up and pulled herself over to him, closing the small gap between them. 

_Brave_ , she told herself. _He likes you_.

“I was getting to you,” she teased, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to give me the sad puppy dog eyes.” 

“I wasn’t,” he insisted but the laugh that followed gave him away. “I mean, I didn’t want to assume--”

“Just remember you promised not to think I’m the worst fuck of your life.” 

“I think what you said was something about being a ‘shite lay’ because you’ve clearly never spent any time in London-”

Anna cut him off with a kiss. It was long, deep, and slow: the kind she was beginning to realize she’d wanted to give him for a long time, maybe even since she’d woken up from being clinically dead for twenty-two seconds and found him sleeping on the floor in SAM Node, waiting for her to come back. 

“You will never be the worst of anything in my life,” he breathed against her when they broke apart. “Not even close.”

That was sweet, almost like something a boyfriend might say. The thought made her uncomfortable, not necessarily the idea of Liam as a boyfriend, simply the idea of one at all. She couldn’t do that here, not now...not _yet_. 

She hooked a thumb through the waistband of his pants and pulled. 

“Help me get these off, Kosta.” 

He started to give another “ma’am” and mock salute, like he’d done earlier when she’d told him to take hers off, but she cut him off with another kiss. He quickly skipped to silent acquiescence, stretching out on the crumpled up rug and helping her rid him of the Initiative issued blues.

It was one thing to feel him through two layers of clothing, and entirely another to see all of him laid bare before her. She’d seen plenty of naked men in vids on the extranet back home--she and Malik had both easily learned how to bypass the content filters Ellen had put in place by the time they were fourteen. At least Alec had never caught her watching one the way he’d caught Malik (a long, condescending lecture had followed).

An erect cock was a bit more intimidating in real life than on her omni-tool screen, but, more than anything, she found herself curious about what it would be like to slide down onto him. The idea sent a little shiver down her spine.

She swung one leg over him and straddled his hips. He took her left hand in his right. They both started to speak at the same time. 

“Just reminding you that you promised not to think I suck,” she reiterated.

“Oh, are we going right to this?” he asked.

They looked at one another, both a bit taken aback by the other’s comment. Then, again, they both rushed to respond to what the other had said at the same time, getting halfway through those responses before starting to laugh at their simultaneous, yet different, conversations. 

“What do you mean ‘going right to this’?” she asked, after a joking glare that informed him she was going to speak first. 

“I know you said you’d never done this...I just thought you’d want to, you know, return the favor in a way more similar to how I did it for you.”

“I want to try this. I feel--” She paused, wondering if the comment was too cheesy and switched directions. “Unless you don’t want to.”

“ _Hell yes_ \--I mean...hell...no, this would be _amazing_ , but I don’t want you not on board with anything we do.” 

“I feel…” (it was cheesy but she resolved to say it anyways), “I feel safe with you, so I’m...willing. I want to.”

He smiled at that. It was a genuine kind of smile, not the kind he’d been using to tease her. It looked remarkable on him; her heart soared a little at her ability to bring something like it to his face. She kissed him again.

“Sit up with me,” she said. “Help me do this.”

He sat up, letting go of her hand to use it to brace himself upright. She took hold of his cock, it felt hot and heavy in her hand, and did her best to position it up against herself. 

She drew in a breath and slid downward. There was a slight twinge at her entrance, not even pain just _unfamiliarity_ , but it was easier after that. Another slight moan escaped her lips at the delightful burn of taking him in deeper. Liam let out a noise between a sigh and a whimper and wrapped his free arm around her waist. 

“Fuck, Anna,” he murmured into her cheek. “You are so--”

“So what?”

She coaxed him along with a slight roll of her hips that pulled another guttural sigh out of him.

“You are so gorgeous.” 

The words filled her with a swell of confidence (she thought about making a joke about being “shite” again but decided that was for later), and she pushed at him until he took the hint and, letting go of her waist, laid back down. 

He seemed unable to refrain from touching her as she rolled her hips again, finding a steadier rhythm. His hands found her sides again and fingernails dug into the soft flesh there as she maintained the rocking motion. 

Leaning forward over him, arms braced on either side, the length of him pressed delightfully against her already swollen clit. She thought, given a few minutes, she’d certainly be able to literally ride out another climax, but she could tell by the way he was clutching at her that he wouldn’t last that long. 

“It’s...been a while,” he offered as explanation for her noticing how quickly this was working for him. 

“Over six hundred years, right?” she cooed. “It’s fine.”

“I’m--” There was another request for permission in there: a silent plea to let him take over from here. She was a little reluctant to let go of how powerful she felt, pulling such sounds and squeezes from the well-defined body between her legs, but remembered how sweet he’d been, how...understanding.

“Yeah,” she agreed. 

Liam pulled her down, almost slick against him, and, all but growling into her ear, began to pump, short and hard, into her. _That_ felt almost blindingly good. She raised her head to watch him, pressing their foreheads together. His eyes were shut, and several words poured out of his mouth--most were unintelligible but she distinctly caught her name in there. 

Her eyes tried to shut too because of the pleasure creeping through her entire abdomen, but she willed them to stay open to watch him beneath her. 

He grabbed her face and kissed her, hard, as he spilled into her, muffling a shout into her lips. A surge of pride shot through her. She _did that_ to him.

Nearly an hour later, as they finally pulled their clothes back on after an in-depth discussion in which he promised she was definitely not bad at this and an attempt at another go before they both violently remembered they were due on duty very soon, she thought of her brother’s stupid bet once again. 

She looked forward to transferring ten credits to him if he woke...no, _when_ he woke...and seeing how long it took him to notice. 

Liam put a hand on her hip to steady her as she tried to pull her pants on while balancing on one foot. 

“Thanks,” she laughed. 

He smiled at her again.

 _Definitely worth it_.


End file.
